Limyaael's Fantasy Rants

Limyaael is an English graduate student studying for her Ph.D. In 2003, she decided to express her views on fantasy literature in a rant entitled Why I get impatient with clichéd fantasy. Since then, she has written more rants on her online journal.

Despite the name, Limyaael’s rants are not just for fantasy writers. She also has covered topics that are not limited to fantasy, like dialogue and romance, as well as more general topics like plotting and characterization. One of the features of the journal format is that Limyaael’s commenters also have much to say, from additional facts to opposing viewpoints.

The Rants used to be posted on LiveJournal, but Limyaael has moved to InsaneJournal. The Rants originally posted on LJ can still be accessed there, though.

Limyaael’s Fantasy Rants are updated here. The archive of Rants can be accessed here, or by tag, and here, or here . (warning: some of tag links in both journals are dead, but posts are there)

Limyaael's rants were scarcely updated for a while starting around April 2008. In this post she explained the reasons, and the Rants were not updated until she had more free time. They started back up for a little while, then stopped again (the last was May 28th, 2010). They have yet to resume (as of February 2017).

Tropes relevant to Limyaael's Fantasy Rants

Tropes Limyaael has specifically ranted about


Tropes that have been mentioned or discussed on the side while ranting about any of the above topics

Take the amount of knowledge most fantasy authors have about horses, as discussed in the last rant. Now take half that knowledge. Now halve the half. This seems to be about the amount the average fantasy author knows about ocean-going, pre-twentieth century ships without doing research.
I mean, at least most fantasists know the approximate size of a horse. They know that writing a horse as squeezing into a gopher hole is insane. Yet they write about roomy ships that apparently have dozens of cabins for rich passengers, and all the room for horses that those passengers’ hearts could desire, while the crew turns invisible when not needed and violates the law of conservation of mass when present.

  • Unusually Uninteresting Sight: During her rant about "telcoms", Limyaael wonders how a character can just waltz into a town with a telepathic wolf/dragon/whatever by their side and nobody even bats an eye at it, much less try to chase it out of town or kill it. Especially when the creature being a telepathic companion is kept secret, and "the hunters have no reason not to shoot a dangerous beast who shows little fear of humans and is lurking around the village."


Tropes that manifest in the rants themselves

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